Say a tissue needs a few cells of a certain type, roughly evenly spaced throughout. One strategy to achieve this is for all cells in the region to have a tendancy towards developing those characteristics, but also for the quickest to do so to simultaneously produce a messaging molecule that suppresses that tendency in its near neighbours.
The title is wrong, and is not the actual title of the paper. They discovered some new aspects of how regular mitochondria work, not a new kind of mitochondria.
My take: In mitochondria, there is a trade-off between making ATP and making the building blocks of proteins. Different mitochondria can specialize in doing one or the other.
Yep, that was also my takeaway. In addition, the population of mitochondria regulates the proportion of their specializations via fission and fusion among themselves.
I wonder if there are any disorders related to disregulation in the process.
Yes, there are many mitochondrial diseases related to defects in fission and fusion- it seems plausible that something like what you are suggesting is involved.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 45.9 ms ] threadIt sounds more like mitochondria can specialise their biochemistry depending on the needs of the cell.
Say a tissue needs a few cells of a certain type, roughly evenly spaced throughout. One strategy to achieve this is for all cells in the region to have a tendancy towards developing those characteristics, but also for the quickest to do so to simultaneously produce a messaging molecule that suppresses that tendency in its near neighbours.
I wonder if there are any disorders related to disregulation in the process.